Americans 

of German Origin 

AND THE WAR 



By 
Otto H. Kahn 



Extracts from an address before 

The Merchants Association of New York 

at its Liberty Loan Meeting 

June 1, 1917 



Americans 

of German Origin 

AND THE WAR 



By 
Otto H. Kahn 



^b'2^° 



^^■'^ 



Americans 

of German Origin 

AND THE WAR 

Extracts from an address before 

The Merchants Association of New York 

at its Liberty Loan Meeting 

June 1, 1917 



WE HAVE MET to-day in 
pursuance of a high pur- 
pose, a purpose which at 
this fateful moment is one and the 
same wherever, throughout the 
world, the language of free men is 
spoken and understood. 

It is the purpose of a common 
determination to fight and to bear 

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AMERICANS of German 

and to dare everything and never 
to cease nor rest until the accursed 
thing which has brought upon the 
world the unutterable calamity, 
the devil's visitation of this appall- 
ing war, is destroyed beyond all 
possibility of resurrection. 

That accursed thing is not a 
nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit 
which has made the government 
possessed by it and executing its 
abhorrent and bloody bidding an 
abomination in the sight of God 
and men. 

What we are now contending for 
by the side of our splendidly 



Origin AND THE WAR 

brave and sorely tried Allies, after 
infinite forbearance, after delay 
which many of us found it hard to 
bear, are the things which are 
amongst the highest and most 
cherished that the civilized world 
has attained through the toil, sac- 
rifices and suffering of its best in 
the course of many centuries. 

They are the things without 
which darkness would fall upon 
hope, and life would become in- 
tolerable. 

They are the things of humanity, 
liberty, justice and mercy, for 
which the best men amongst all 

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AMERICANS of German 

the nations — including the German 
nation — have fought and bled these 
many generations past, which were 
the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schil- 
ler, Kant, and a host of others who 
had made the name of Germany 
great and beloved until fanatical 
Prussianism run amuck came to 
make its deeds a by-word and 
a hissing. 

This appalling conflict which has 
been drenching the world with 
blood is not a mere fight of one or 
more peoples against one or more 
other peoples. 

It goes far deeper. 

[6] 



Origin AND THE WAR 

It sharply divides the soul and 
conscience of the world. 

It transcends vastly the bounds 
of racial allegiance. 

It is ethically fundamental. 

In determining one's attitude 
towards it, the time has gone by — 
if it ever was — when race and blood 
and inherited affiliations were per- 
mitted to count. 



AMERICANS of German 



A CENTURY and a half ago 
Americans of English birth 
- rose to free this country 
from the oppression of the rulers 
of England. To-day Americans of 
German birth are called upon to 
rise, together with their fellow- 
citizens of all races, to free not only 
this country but the whole world 
from the oppression of the rulers 
of Germany, an oppression far less 
capable of being endured and of far 
graver portent. 

[8] 



Origin AND THE WAR 

Speaking as one born of German 
parents, I do not hesitate to state 
it as my deep conviction that the 
greatest service which men of German 
birth or antecedents can render to 
the country of their origin is to pro- 
claim, and to stand up for those 
great and fine ideals and national 
qualities and traditions which they 
inherited from their ancestors, and 
to set their faces like flint against 
the monstrous doctrines and acts of a 
rulership which have robbed them of 
the Germany which they loved and in 
which they took just pride, the Ger- 
many which had the good will, 

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AMERICANS of German 

respect and admiration of the en- 
tire world. 

I do not hesitate to state it as 
my solemn conviction that the 
more unmistakably and whole- 
heartedly Americans of German ori- 
gin throw themselves into the struggle 
which this country has entered in 
order to rescue Germany, no less 
than America and the rest of tlie 
world from those sinister forces 
that are, in President Wilson's 
language, the enemy of all man- 
kind, the better they protect and 
serve the repute of the old German 
name and the true advantage of 
the German people. 

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Origin AND THE WAR 



GENTLEMEN, I measure my 
words. They are borne out 
all too emphatically by the 
hideous eloquence of deeds which 
have appalled the conscience of the 
civilized world. They are borne out 
by numberless expressions, written 
and spoken, of German professors 
employed by the State to teach 
its youth. 

The burden of that teaching is 
that might makes right, and that 
the German nation has been chosen 
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AMERICANS of German 

to exercise morally, mentally and 
actually, the over-lordship of the 
world and must and will accom- 
plish that task and that destiny 
whatever the cost in bloodshed, 
misery and ruin. 

The spirit of that teaching, in 
its intolerance, its mixture of 
sanctimoniousness and covetous- 
ness and its self-righteous assump- 
tion of a world-improving mission, 
is closely akin to the spirit from 
which were bred the religious wars 
of the past through the long and 
dark years when Protestants and 
Catholics killed one another and 
devastated Europe. 

[12] 



Origin AND THE WAR 

I speak in sorrow, for I am speak- 
ing of the country of my origin and 
I have not forgotten what I owe 
to it. 

I speak in bitter disappointment, 
for I am thinking of the Germany 
of former days, the Germany 
which has contributed its full 
share to the store of the world's 
imperishable assets and which, in 
not a few fields of human endeavor 
and achievement held the leading 
place among the nations of the 
earth. 

And I speak in the firm faith 
that, after its people shall have 

[13] 



AMERICANS of German 

shaken off and made atonement 
for the dreadful spell which an 
evil fate has cast upon them, that 
former Germany is bound to arise 
again and, in due course of time, 
will again deserve and attain the 
good-will and the high respect of 
the world and the affectionate 
loyalty of all those of German 
blood in foreign lands. 

But I know that neither Germany 
nor this country nor the rest of the 
world can return to happiness and 
peace and fruitful labor until it 
shall have been made manifest, 
bitterly and unmistakably manifest, 

[14] 



Origin AND THE WAR 

to the rulers who bear the blood- 
guilt for this wanton war and to 
their misinformed and misguided 
peoples that the spirit which un- 
chained it cannot prevail, that the 
hateful doctrines and methods in 
pursuance of which and in compli- 
ance with which it is conducted are 
rejected with abhorrence by the civil- 
ized world, and that the over-weening 
ambitions which it was meant to 
serve can never be achieved. 

The fight for civilization which we 
all fondly believed had been won 
many years ago must be fought over 
again. In this sacred struggle it is 

[15] 



AMERICANS of German 

now our privilege to take no mean 
part, and our glory to bring sac- 
rifices, 

* * * 



16] 



Origin AND THE WAR 



OUR one and supreme job, the 
one purpose to which all 
others must give way, is to 
bring this war to a successful con- 
clusion. One of the means toward 
that end is to make the Liberty 
Loan a veritable triumph, an over- 
whelming expression of our gigantic 
economic strength. 

To accomplish that, let each one 
of us feel himself personally re- 
sponsible, let each one of us work 
as if our life depended on the 

[17] 



AMERICANS of German 

result. And, in a very real sense, 
does not our national life and our 
individual life depend on the out- 
come of this war? 

Would life be tolerable if the 
power of Prussianism, run mad 
and murderous, held the world by 
the throat, if the primacy of the 
earth belonged to a government 
steeped in the doctrines of a bar- 
barous past and supported by a 
ruling cast which preaches the 
deification of sheer might, which 
despises liberty, hates democracy 
and would destroy both if it could? 

To that spirit and to those doc- 

fl81 



Origin AND THE WAR 

trines, we, citizens of America 
and servants, as such, of humanity, 
will oppose our solemn and unshak- 
able resolution "to make the world 
safe for democracy," and we will 
say, with a clear conscience, in the 
noble words which more than five 
hundred years ago were uttered by 
the Parliament of Scotland : 

"/^ is not for glory, or for riches, 
or for honor that we fight, but 
for liberty alone which no good 
man loses but with his life^ 



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